Finally, a voiceover that doesn't make us want to scream. As our unseen overseer, Kristen Bell's purr is the sexiest disembodied fun you can have without paying $4.95 per minute.

One consequence of the growth of microelectronics has been an exploration of the periodic table reminiscent of European navigators' search for the spice islands half a millennium ago. Then, as now, the objective was material of great rarity and value, which was needed in only small quantities but which did jobs that nothing else could manage. In the case of spices, such as nutmeg, cloves and mace, this job was to enhance the taste of food and demonstrate wealth and sophistication. They were so valuable that wars were fought to control their supply in some cases.

In the case of indium, gallium and tantalum it is their unique electrical properties that are of interest. Indium-tin oxide, for example, is both transparent and electrically conductive. Without it, liquid-crystal display screens would be much harder to make. Meanwhile tantalum (used as an insulator in mobile-phone chips) once became so valuable that it, too, helped drive a war—the civil war in eastern Congo, where its ore has been dusted over the countryside like icing sugar by ancient volcanic eruptions.

The role that so-called quants play in the financial world is analogous to the role batfish play in keeping coral reefs tidy. Just as batfish do not construct the reef but are essential to its health, quants do not create the structure financial markets depend on but do preserve the conditions that make markets function.

Robert wept silently, angry with himself because he knew that half his wretchedness was just self-pity, exploiting his grief as a disguise.

The great composer Arnold Schoenberg once wrote of Nyiregyházi, in a note to Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Otto Klemperer, “Such power of expression I have never heard before. … Technique: it is astonishing what and how he plays: one never has the sense that it is difficult, that it is technique at all, but rather that sheer force of will permits him to surmount all difficulties in realizing an idea. — You see I'm becoming almost poetic.”

Opera survives, but it is a tiny sliver of a much bigger, looser music market. The future composts the past: old operas get mounted for living anachronisms; Andrew Lloyd Webber picks up the rest of the business.

The problem is that there is no need for the decision markets. The executives and politicians like to make decisions themselves. With all due respect to my readers, I’ll have a graphic metaphor. Trying to sell the concept of decision markets to executives and politicians is like trying to sell very sophisticated, mechanized, high-performance dildos to young men; there is no need for that in the market. For some mysterious reason, the young men insist on performing “that”… using their own instrument.

She wasn't coming back. She would only deign to see her husband under conditions that amounted to a slap in the face. He didn't complain. He visited as often as she would allow: twice a week, then once. Then every two. Their marriage decayed with the exponential determinism of a radioactive isotope and still he sought her out, and accepted her conditions.

Szpindel's eyebrows drew together like courting caterpillers. “What changed?”